Twilio is a cloud based messaging service; it can do everything from sending SMS’s, to being the basis of an entirely cloud based virtual call centre. It’s pretty powerful stuff.
My requirements are fairly basic though, I just want to be able to send SMS’s from a PowerShell script to engineers to alert them when things go wrong. The first thing to do is head over to Twilio and set yourself a test account up, which is free, and will allow you to send messages to yourself.
All interaction with Twilio is via their REST API and the first method I have to interact with it is using the official Twilio C# DLLs, the instructions to download are here. Once you have the DLLs, pop them in the same directory as the script you are going to be running and here’s a function to make use of them along with a sample call:
function invoke-twilioSMS ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$AccountSid, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$message, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$fromTel, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$toTel, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$authToken, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$dllPath ) { Add-Type -path "$dllPath\RestSharp.dll" Add-Type -path "$dllPath\Twilio.Api.dll" $twilio = new-object Twilio.TwilioRestClient($AccountSid,$authToken) $msg = $twilio.SendSmsMessage($fromTel, $toTel, $message) } invoke-twilioSMS -AccountSid "<AccountSid>" ` -authToken "<authToken>" -message "<message>" ` -fromTel "<fromTel"> -toTel "<toTel>" ` -dllPath "<scriptPath>"
The problem with this method is that it’s awkward to get hold of the DLLs, and I find there is something clunky about having to use DLLs to call a REST API. So in method 2, I make use of the Invoke-RestMethod (which arrived in PowerShell 3.0) to talk to the REST API directly.
function invoke-twilioRESTSMS ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$AccountSid, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$message, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$fromTel, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$toTel, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$authToken ) { # Build a URI $URI = "https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/$AccountSid/SMS/Messages.json" # encode authorization header $secureAuthToken = ConvertTo-SecureString $authToken -AsPlainText -Force $credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($AccountSid,$secureAuthToken) # content $postData = "From=$fromTel&To=$toTel&Body=$message" # Fire Request $msg = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $URI -Body $postData -Credential $credential -Method "POST" -ContentType "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" } invoke-twilioRESTSMS -AccountSid "<AccountSid>" ` -authToken "<authToken>" -message "<message>" ` -fromTel "<fromTel"> -toTel "<toTel>"
Method 2 is my preferred why of doing things for something as simple as sending a SMS.
There is still one further way to send a message using PowerShell and Twilio, and this addresses those who are using PowerShell 2.0, so can’t use Invoke-RestMethod, and don’t want to use the DLLs; we can still build a request from scratch using the System.Net.WebRequest object:
function post-twilioSMS ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$AccountSid, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$message, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$fromTel, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$toTel, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$authToken ) { # Build a URI $URI = "https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/$AccountSid/SMS/Messages.json" $requestUri = new-object Uri ($URI) # Create the request and specify attributes of the request. $request = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create($requestUri) # encode authorization header $authText = $AccountSid + ":" + $authToken $authUTF8 = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($authText) $auth64 = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String($authUTF8) # Define the requred headers $request.Method = "POST" $request.Headers.Add("Authorization: Basic $auth64"); $request.Accept = "application/json, application/xml, text/json, text/x-json, text/javascript, text/xml" $request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" # content $fromTel = [System.Web.HttpUtility]::UrlEncode($fromTel) $toTel = [System.Web.HttpUtility]::UrlEncode($toTel) $message = [System.Web.HttpUtility]::UrlEncode($message) $postData = "From=$fromTel&To=$toTel&Body=$message" $request.ContentLength = $postData.Length # Stream Bytes $postBytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::ascii.GetBytes($postData) $requestStream = $request.GetRequestStream() $requestStream.Write($postBytes, 0,$postBytes.length) $requestStream.flush() $requestStream.Close() # Fire Request $response = $request.GetResponse() # Output Response $responseStream = $response.GetResponseStream() $responseReader = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader $responseStream $returnedResponse = $responseReader.ReadToEnd() $response.close() } post-twilioSMS -AccountSid "<AccountSid>" ` -authToken "<authToken>" -message "<message>" ` -fromTel "<fromTel"> -toTel "<toTel>" ` -dllPath "<scriptPath>"
Method 3 works just fine, its lacks the simplicity of Method 2, but it does give you very granular control over what the Web Request is doing; which I have found very useful when working with other REST API’s which aren’t quite as well behaved as Twilio.
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Steven Askwith 